Overwatch: Being A Mercy Main

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I’m sure all of you know about the huge hit game, Overwatch at this point. Regarded by many as one of the best games of all time, Blizzard’s team based strategy game has taken the world by storm. I recently began getting into the game myself in the last month and haven’t been able to put it down. This post won’t be like many of my traditional blog posts. This time, I’ll be talking about playing as a Mercy main (main essentially means you play as that character almost always). In a game about being a cohesive unit, there are many intricacies and varieties of archetypes for characters and team builds. One of the most crucial elements of a well-rounded team is having a good support character, hopefully two of them. After discovering that in the initial stages of the game most people avoid these characters like the plague, I decided to play Mercy, a support, and immediately fell in love with playing her character.

There are several game modes in Overwatch, the two most prominent are quickplay and competitive. When you’re starting out you can only play quickplay. Team composition, organization and strategy are usually limited in these games and for the most part people are looking to get kills. This is where I discovered that if I wanted to win, I needed to fill a role that was rarely taken and was never never filled particularly well.

For the most part, support gives the team exactly what it is, support. Your goal is to use your awareness, understanding and precision to help your team win. Most of the time this means you aren’t even trying to kill people, you’re simply looking to help your teammates out of sticky situations and accomplish goals to achieve victory with your team. After spending time playing several of the supports, it became quickly apparent that Mercy, who in my opinion is the best support character in most situations, was my favorite character. She is a character with limited firepower and durability. However, her abilities, which give her some of the best healing, damage boosting and elusiveness, make her a key component to most team compositions.

Just to give you some insight as to what she does I’ll just go over the basics. Her main weapon, which is her staff is perhaps her most valuable tool. It has two functions, healing and boosting damage. Her staff connects her to members of your team with a tether beam. The healing effect heals for 60 health a second, which is the best targeted healing in the game, and her boost increases damage output of the character by 30% (Her boost ability is amazing!). Another ability which is equally as important is called Guardian Angel. This is what gives Mercy her elusive properties. By using it, you can fly to other players in a 15, radius in lightning speed.

An ability that goes hand in hand with that is Angelic Descent, which allows you to gradually fall rather than drop down quickly (This ability has saved me more times than I can remember). She has a pistol as well, but it’s not that great and should only be used in certain situations. If you’re new to playing her it’s something you likely shouldn’t use at all because if used incorrectly it can create serious problems for you and your team. The final ability and perhaps her most well-known is her Resurrect. This is her ultimate (an ability a character can usually only when they have charged up enough through healing or damage) and it can completely turn the tide of a match if used properly. What it allows you to do is take teammates who have recently died nearby you and instantly bring them back to life.

Now that you understand how she works, you can see that she’s an incredible character that is fun to play and crucial to have on most teams. Since the game is competitive the reason I started picking her when I played was simply to win. After a brief time however, I couldn’t imagine not playing her anymore because of how fun she is to play. After a few short weeks, I decided it was time for me to try my hand at competitive with her. There are several ranks in competitive Overwatch, in ascending order it goes, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Master and finally, Grandmaster. After playing for around 3 weeks I ended up ranking in Platinum which I was ecstatic about and I’m now closer to Diamond.

At this point I’m completely committed to playing her as my main when it comes to competitive. Her abilities, versatility, importance and enjoyment to play as, make her the best possible option for me. When I first started the game, I wasn’t that invested. I’ve never been a huge fan of online games, especially competitive ones, I’ve always preferred single player games. For the first time in years though I found a way to enjoy a game like Overwatch. The largest reason for that is with characters like Mercy you don’t have to focus on killing people to be successful or for your team to be victorious. I must give kudos to Blizzard for their ability to make a competitive game where working together as a team and focusing on completing objectives is the priority, versus getting kills. Giving players the chance to be a character that helps the team rather than getting kills helps to bring in more players like myself and expand their target audience immensely. Like I said earlier, when I started playing, I didn’t think I’d like it whatsoever. As it turns out, I love Overwatch and I’m so glad that I get to play it when I have time, especially when I play as Mercy.

(Here's a video with a few of my early highlights and a great song to accompany it!)